My kids' middle school just call it something different, but they still play it. I'd be glad to see it go. Hated it!

My hair used to be naturally dark brown, almost black. I've been covering the gray for over 10 years, and don't know how much gray I'd have if I stopped coloring. Judging from my roots, it's a lot. I'm thinking about just letting it go gray, but how do you do that gradually? I don't really want the bottom half black and the top half white. :D

Not really a field guide but I love this little book for identifying trees.

This has happened with scarves too. I never let my kids wear them when they were younger.

My dd had the same exact assignment. Ridiculous.

I have a Chi and Sedu, and prefer the Sedu, although the Chi is great too.

My understanding is that the founders of whole language were hostile to phonics instruction from the very beginning. Here are some quotes: "Phonics is incompatible with a whole language perspective on reading and therefore is rejected." Watson, D. (1989). Defining & describing whole language. Elementary School Journal, 90, 129-142. "Children can develop and use an intuitive knowledge of letter-sound correspondences [without] any phonics instruction [or] without deliberate instruction from adults." (p. 86) Weaver, C. (1980). Psycholinguistics and reading. Cambridge, MA: Winthrop. "Phonics is incompatible with a whole language perspective on reading and therefore is rejected." Watson, D. (1989). Defining & describing whole language. Elementary School Journal, 90, 129-142. "Reading without guessing is not reading at all." Smith, F. (1973). Psychology and reading. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston. "It is easier for a reader to remember the unique appearance and pronunciation of a whole word like 'photograph' than to remember the unique pronunciations of meaningless syllables and spelling units" (p.146) Smith, F. (1985). Reading without nonsense: Making sense of reading. New York: Teachers College Press. "Sounding out a word is a cumbersome, time-consuming, and unnecessary activity. By using context, we can identify words with only minimal attention to grapho/phonemic cues. The message then seems clear: we should help children learn to use context first." Weaver, C. (1988). Reading process & practice: From socio-psycholinguistics to whole language. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann. "Matching letters with sounds is a flat-earth view of the world, one that rejects modern science about reading." (p. 371) Goodman, K. S. (1986). What's whole in whole language. Richmond Hill, Ontario: Scholastic. "Phonics, which means teaching a set of spelling to sound correspondence rules that permit the decoding of written language into speech, just does not work." Smith, F. (1985). Reading without nonsense (2nd. Ed). New York: Teachers College Press. "Carefully controlled vocabulary and decontextualised phonics instruction are incompatible with meaningful authentic texts." Goodman, K. S. (1989). Whole language research: Foundations and development. The Elementary School Journal, 90, 208-221. "We might offer students some phonics hints at an appropriate moment when they are writing and aren't sure how to spell something." Newman, J.M., & Church, S.M. (1991). Myths of whole language. The Reading Teacher, 44, 20-26. "The worst readers are those who try to sound out unfamiliar words according to the rules of phonics." (p.438) Smith, F. (1992). Learning to read: the never-ending debate. Phi Delta Kappan, 74, 432-441. Whole language started with Goodman and Smith.

Open classrooms Heterogeneous grouping for everything Group projects Hostility towards writing Whole language Reform math Self esteem training Emphasis on creative writing *Meaningless time intensive projects I had open classrooms in 5th and 6th grade. Awful. One of those years we did a self paced math curriculum. I finished it early in the year and then had nothing to do for math for months. We also spent a lot of time learning non-base ten bases, and the teacher clearly didn't get it. I liked it, although it was a huge waste of time. *Example of meaningless time intensive project: My dd13 is in public school this year. They are currently doing a unit on poetry. They aren't learning about any poets, or reading classic or well known poetry. Instead, they wrote 10 original poems. For one of these poems, instead of writing it out on paper or the computer, they were to search magazines for the words, cut the words out, and paste them on a piece of paper. So far my dd has spent at least three hours on this ridiculous cut and paste job, because it's hard to find words like "smashing" and "tidbit" in a magazine. The teacher told them if they couldn't find the actual word, they could cut out individual letters and spell it that way. :banghead:

Door County is nice, if you want to travel a couple hours away.

I can't see that page. Do you have to make it public or change some settings to make it available?

I got pregnant with ds when dd was 10 weeks old, and I was exclusively nursing.

The date on that article is June 2008, and I can find no other reliable source. I don't take anything Natural News says seriously.

Did the teacher come up with those? It sounds like they aren't in the original curriculum. I think the teacher is confused.

Spalding teaches the er sound like this: So mother and father sound like "er the er of her". But the others don't make sense.

Do you have a baby video monitor, or could you borrow one for a few days? Then you could watch what's going on out there.

This is an article I like. Here is a snip Whole article here

That was painful to watch. He has Hepatitis. I wonder if he has hepatic encephalopathy.

My 13 dd wouldn't wear those. I'd look for yoga pants.

You might also check out the local Kumon Center and see what those parents have to say about the math program. :D

My dd would have many thousands if I let her have unlimited. We tried that. It was ugly.

Dd1: 250, because that's her limit. Dd2 and ds: Less than 100. But they have a limit of 250 also.

Also, older cars aren't going to have the safety features you'd find on new cars.

My oldest turns 16 this summer. We are planning to buy a car that the three kids will share until the youngest leaves home, so for the next 6 years or so. We haven't made a decision on what type yet, but have found this article helpful as we make a decision.

If it were up to me we wouldn't have a tv at all. But since that isn't going to happen here, I absolutely draw the line at having them in bedrooms.

:iagree::iagree::iagree: I would never let my kid drive a convertible without a rollbar. And ESPECIALLY not if she's already totaled a car.